Record Store Day: a celebration?

Record Store Day. A celebration of indie record stores and vinyl or a marketing scam for the bigger labels to cash in on music at least once a year?

Record Store Day has the potential to be a great day for fans of music. Special releases, in-store performances. What’s not to like. Still I have the feeling that instead of celebration independent music stores it’s all about making a quick buck.

Vinyl buyers all over the world are looking forward to stand in line and buy their limited copy of band X or the reissue of performer Y. Like them I’ve made a list myself of potentially great additions to my shelf of records. Pretty much the same as last year. And like last year I will be disappointed again.

Having hurried to get my kids clothed in time for the local record store to open I rush to the box with Record Store Day releases. Too bad my independent store didn’t get all the releases that were announced on the internet. But the biggest dissapointment every year is the price of some ‘exclusive’ records. If this really is a celebration why not price the special releases the same as any other record?

What happens is that a lot of vinyl doesn’t get sold, goes online and can be bought of the Internet for lower rates. So to celebrate record stores, we put a big margin on exclusive records, enough so people don’t buy them in the record stores and we can later sell them online? To me that’s kind of missing the point of Record Store Day.

Now tell me which records did you buy today?

Print this page